


Every Vessel Pitching Hard to Starboard

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Haircuts, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-30
Updated: 2012-05-30
Packaged: 2017-11-06 08:45:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo needs a favor. A <em>small</em> favor.</p><p>(She's not what you'd call thrilled to admit it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Vessel Pitching Hard to Starboard

**Author's Note:**

> Although mostly lighthearted, this story _does_ allude to aftereffects of trauma (specifically, the events of No Exit); if that is uncomfortable reading for you, then be advised.

“Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?” he asks, toying idly with the corner of the magazine propped against his knee – he hasn’t been reading it, not really. “Problem?”

“No, just – for Christ’s sake, can you come here for a second?” Jo’s voice crackles, and he shrugs, tossing the magazine down.

“What is it?” he asks, leaning around the door to the hotel bathroom; she jumps, then shrugs, flicking her hair behind her ears.

“Do me a favor?” she asks, eyes on the grey-green tile below them; he raises his eyebrows, trying to get a look at whatever she has clutched in her hands. She shifts her weight from foot to foot and sighs, holding up her prize – scissors.

“Cut my hair?” she asks, shrugging. “I can’t keep it out of my face, and…”

“Uh.” He inches slightly back, eying the scissors like they’re going to jump up and bite him, then catches himself and quickly straightens up. “Do I look like a hairdresser? There’s probably a barbershop or something in town, just let me grab my keys.”

“I don’t –” She stops, blows an annoyed puff of air between her lips and turns away. “Oh, forget it, I’ll just pull it back.”

“What, what’d I do?” he demands, palms out. “Is this some kind of – I don’t even know, Jesus Christ. Whatever.” He pulls back, but his hand stays on the doorframe, and he hesitates, eyeing the cracked paint on the ceiling. Jo sighs; with the mirror next to her he can see her clenching her teeth.

“I just don’t want to sit there while a stranger messes with my hair, okay?” she grits out. “Look, I’m fine, I mean it, I’m fine, it’s just – this one thing. That’s all.”

“What – crap. Is this about Holmes?”

“Look, I said never mind!” she snaps, twisting around to glare at him; he blinks, and she sighs, turns to brace her hands against the sink and shake her head. “Sorry I asked. It’s no big deal, just forget it.”

The faucet drips – _plink. Plink._ _Plink-ink._ Dean’s boots clunk lightly on the tile, and he brushes his thumb against Jo’s wrist, easing the scissors out of her hands. She turns, blinking up at him as he steps back, clearing his throat.

“So, how’s this gonna work?” he asks, gesturing at the room around them. “You wanna sit down somewhere, or –”

“Um. Sounds good.” She blinks, starts to ease herself onto the counter and then stops, shaking her head. “Edge of the tub okay?”

“Can’t see why not.” He follows her over, knocks the lid on the toilet down with his elbow and sits on that behind her, shaking his head. “How short do you want this, anyway?”

“Short.” She drums her fingers on the edge of the tub, jerks them still by gripping the rim. “I just want it out of my face, I don’t really care what it looks like.”

“Good, ‘cause I’ll probably make you look like a mop.” He sighs, tugs a long damp strand loose from the rest and sets the scissors around it, doesn’t close the blades just yet. “You sure about this?”

“Do you want me to get my face eaten off by a ghost because I was busy spitting hair out of my mouth?”

“Nope,” he grants, and tilts his head, trying to gauge the length a little. “Like, shoulders short, boy short…”

“I don’t know, okay? Too short to get in the way, longer than yours is. It’s just hair, it’ll grow back.”

His mouth twists. “Fair enough.” He slides the scissors carefully to the base of her neck, a little higher, and snips, blinks at the way the loose hair spills across his knee. “Probably end up looking like Sammy.”

“Do you cut his hair?” Jo asks, carefully still as he measures out another strand, lips pursed. He shakes his head, then catches up with himself:

“Not like it is now, he got it like that in college and gets someone to trim it whenever we’ve got a few free days. I did a few times when he was little, though.” Snip, snip, and he angles the scissors up over her shoulder, hoping to avoid the whole soup-bowl thing. “Dad used to cut both of ours – kept cutting mine, actually, it was cheaper.” Snip, snip, echoed by the soft shushing sound of falling hair. Dean clears his throat, taps one finger against the side of her neck: “Hey, turn your head?”

“Sure.” She complies, tilting her chin slightly back, and Dean lets his eyes wander over the fine-boned curve of her neck, sighs and shakes his head, and tries to remember the last hot actress he’d seen with short hair.

“How the hell…” he mutters, drawing back from a cut at the last second as the mental image catches up with his hands, and Jo coughs.

“Uh, I got this done professionally a couple of times, and they always dragged all my hair straight in front of my face first, like, straight-out – I mean, if that’s gonna make it easier…”

“Might,” he acknowledges, looking at the way it keeps on coiling around her ear. “Do you have a brush in here or something?”

“A comb – it’s by the sink, behind you – ”

“Gotcha. No, stay still,” he protests, grabbing at her shoulder, “I don’t wanna have to try to get back like this, it’s complicated enough.”

Her lips twitch. “Okay. Just don’t yank.”

“C’mon.” He rolls his eyes, tugs her hair out from behind her ear and tries to figure out how you use a comb from this kind of angle; he scratches against her forehead a couple of times, grimacing with each scrape, but she doesn’t say anything, and finally he sets the comb back down, informing her, “Well, now you look like Cousin It.”

Her lips twitch, half-visible under the hair. “Addams Family?”

“Uh-huh. Okay, hold still.” He holds the scissors back against her hair, gnawing at his lip, and shrugs. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The edge of the blade slides under her hair, just above her eyebrows, and she closes her eyes. _Snip._ _Snip-snip, snip…_

Tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, Dean does his best.

(Her hair, still damp, is smooth and cool between his fingers, strands clinging to his sleeves as it falls, and it’s hard for him not to notice that she smells a bit like apples, considering that he’s practically sticking his nose in her ear while he tries not to screw this up too badly. It shouldn’t be a surprise, the smell – hell, the bottle of hair stuff that she bought is two inches from his knee, CGI apples on the label glinting at him – but it’s distracting all the same.)

(He can see her lips go thin every time the blades go _schnikt_ shut next to her ear, too, and after the first few times he does everything he can not to notice at all.)

Finally he sits back, picking hair from his shirt with a bit of a grimace, and shrugs. “Okay, take a look,” he says, standing back. She stands – putting her ass just on level with his eyes, in fact, which he’s not going to complain about, but he drags himself to his feet as well, ending up behind her as she studies herself in the mirror, tugging a strand thoughtfully. He’s given her almost even bangs – there’s kind of a slant, but some people do that on purpose, right? – and from there it’s just a sequence of tufts angling down to the nape of her neck, sticking out a bit here and there, but not too much. He hopes.

“Not bad,” she says at last, thoughtful, then catches his mirrored eye and grins. “Better than I was expecting, definitely.”

He shrugs, ducking his head to hide a grin. “Yeah, well…”

“Dean? Jo?” Sam calls beyond the door before he has to come up with an end to that sentence.

“In here!” Jo yells back, nudging past Dean towards the door. “Just –”

“Jesus Christ, what happened?”

“Yeah, like you could’ve done any better,” Dean mutters, coming around the door. Jo’s staring a gaping Sam down, hands on her hips and eyebrows cocked, locked and loaded.

“It was getting in my way,” she says, jerking her head at Dean. “He helped me out.”

“She looks like a raggedy Meg,” Sam accuses, staring between the two of them. Dean snorts.

“Yeah, so? She was hot, except for the whole demon thing.”

“Well, I didn’t say it was _bad_ ,” Sam huffs, hands out defensively. “Just… surprising, that’s all. But, uh, cute.”

Dean’s seriously starting to wonder whether Jo’s eyebrows count as a deadly weapon. Sam coughs, clears his throat and shuffles past them; Dean’s just digging in his pocket for something to do when Sam yells, “Oh, for –”

“What?”

Sam sticks his head around the bathroom door, long-suffering. “You couldn’t put a towel down or something?” Dean blinks. “There’s hair everywhere but the _ceiling_ in here, dude, it’s disgusting. C’mon!”

“We’ll go find a broom or something,” he grumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Jesus Christ.” Her jerks his head towards the door, eying Jo; she shrugs, lips quirking – that weird “kay, whatever” face she has, it’s kinda cute – and follows him out.

Two minutes and half of a clattering stairwell later, she pauses, two steps ahead of him. “Hey, Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.” She’s biting her lip, arms folded over her chest as she stares down the steps, and he shrugs, up to stand even with her – they barely fit.

“No problem,” he says, shrugging, and starts off, slow until she starts to fall neatly into step beside him. Studying the cobweb-coated undersides of the stairs above, he adds, “Y’know, Sammy’s got this crazy thing about clowns. Hates them.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” They hit the landing; Dean tugs the door open, tilts his head at Jo and takes full advantage of the chance to check out her ass while she ducks through ahead of him. “Hell, planes scare the crap out of me – don’t tell anybody that one, I swear I’ll end you.”

“And here I thought you just liked driving,” Jo says, glancing over her shoulder. Her eyes are dancing, and he grins.

“Yeah, well, that too. I mean, what else would I do, leave my girl on the other side of the continent? No way.”

“Hm, fair enough.” She shrugs, making that face of hers again, and grins. “Hey, I see a sign for the closet – race ya!”

“Aw, c’mon –”

Her hair does look pretty cute, ends curling a bit at the nape of her neck. He shakes his head, laughing, and runs after her.


End file.
